An anti-war, anti-neo-conservative blog to counter the lies of those who wish to condemn us to perpetual conflict. All this, plus horse-racing, football, books, films, television, and plenty of other topics too....
My new book 'Stranger than Fiction', a biography of Edgar Wallace, is available here:
http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/biography-books/stranger-than-fiction-25294.html and here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-than-Fiction-Wallace-Created/dp/0752498827

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Friday, December 24, 2010

A very Merry (White) Christmas

A very happy Christmas to everyone.

Well, it's finally happened. For the first time in exactly forty years, most of the UK has a proper white Christmas. I know for many readers in the USA, Canada and in northern and eastern Europe, a white Christmas is no big deal, but in Britain, (particularly in England), it really is something. We no longer have to dream of a white Christmas, like Bing Crosby, we've actually got one. Great stuff!

Coincidentally, back in 1970, the last time we had a proper white Christmas, we also had a new Conservative government in power, though one which was very different to today’s Con-Dem coalition. In fact you could say that its highly appropriate that given that we’ve got a government which wants to take us back to the darkest days of the 19th century, we’ve got a cold and snowy Dickensian Christmas to go with it. Ebenezer Scrooge lives on.... and he’s to be found at Number 11, Downing Street, living under the name of 'George Osborne'.

As usual, our Christmas sermon comes from the great Christian Socialist George Lansbury. I‘m sure that if George were alive today, he‘d be playing a prominent role in the protests against this truly appalling government.

Keep in mind the fact that the Son of Man, the Christ who lived and was executed by the government of His day, was a great leader, and leader of the common people. It was his great message of Love and Brotherhood which brought him to his death. He knew the poor of the earth were oppressed by the rich and wealthy, and in scathing terms denounced the money changers and all those who defiled the Temple and brought suffering to starving humanity.

George Lansbury, 1926.

UPDATE: You can hear me discussing the 'Winners and Losers' of 2010 on BBC Radio Five Live , here. (the discussion starts at 1hr 24 and a half minutes into the programme.)

As for your quote, I’m sure it won’t be too long before a Mid-West answer to Ivan Karimazov’s Grand Inquisitor comes along to sigh patronisingly that a couple of rich blokes get good mention so we can forget about the whole beatitudes thing and just feel great about being middle class and therefore morally superior.

But I genuinely do feel that the message of the Gospels is relevant like never before: which ironically is bad news both for neo-liberal Christians and for neo-liberal secularists.

Something that really strikes me, curiously, is how much more intelligent and open minded ordinary atheists/ agnostics are compared to the noisy saddoes who nominate themselves the voicepieces of British secularism., who rant about ‘the religious’ (the mirror image of McCarthyite rants on ‘the godless’) and affect to be cracked up every time Hitchens compares belief to North Korea

My secular friends of my age (late 20s) listen with a lot of respect to my arguments that mainstream secular liberalism is mainly about white middle class men telling poor (cough, cough) swarthy people that they are having too many children. Just look at the ‘protest the pope’ coalition: more white and middle class than UKIP. One of their chief messages: the Pope encourages too many poor, dark people to have too many kids (incidentally, when has a secularist/environmentalist ever criticised Sweden for encouraging people to have kids?). Look at Human Rights Watch’s attack on Argentina for letting too many women ‘become’ pregnant. Supported by the liberal wing of Te Graun:

The self-righteous atheist vicars have taken off from the Malthusian platform that the self-righteous Anglican squires left.

Given that I am proud, even bullish, member of a church which is frequently called ‘reactionary’ etc. etc. it might seem strange that I find so much to agree with average real liberal leftists, but I see no irony. In Greece there has long been strong agreement between the Orthodox conservatives and the social democratic left: from patriotism to Serbia to Iraq to Civil Liberties. Conversely their social liberals and economic right wingers are all too eager to form their own coalition.

Unlike their self-appointed spokesmen, my secular friends realise they can’t keep kicking daddy’s shins or pummelling ‘the religious’ strawman to make a better world: we have profound secularisation; we have profound wealth inequality; we have profound social problems; we have some vile foreign policies; we have the most right wing government in modern history.

And my Eastern Orthodox Church is going strong right now. Which I think is both an argument against theological liberalism and ‘conservatism’ as it is usually defined. Orthodoxy is the church of the people: it has rebounded in Russia and Romania. Anglicanism is the church of Malthus: its pews are empty. The Southern Baptist Church has many prominent figures who support neo-conservatism. It can barely keep its American members even with immigration incentives and spending a fortune in evangelisation.

Scotland’s Roman Catholic leader is a proud patriot and theological conservative. Both of these came across in his moral courage in supporting the compassionate treatment of Al Megrahi. He has won a lot of respect for this.

Many developing world leaders are respectful of faith. For all the liberal criticisms of The Vatican, the Pope doesn’t think that developing nations reproducing themselves is a crime in itself. The Russians overthrew tyranny to discover that they were hated more than ever. Pat Buchanan wrote that ‘Orthodox Russia should be our friend’. More ‘liberal’ westerners (like Timothy Garton Ash) couldn’t disagree more.

Merry Christmas, Neil. I always feel rather strange at Christmas; during all religious festivals, for that matter. After having lapsed shortly after my Confirmation as an Anglican, I can't bring myself to return to Christianity. Yet, I see the yawning chasm in secular liberalism, its social atomism, its hypocrisy and the violence that lies all too near its surface of human rights rhetoric. It impoverished the western world forever when it shifted its purpose from the teleological and dialectical 'good/evil' dyad to the non-teleological and non-dialectical - in fact virtually static - 'rights/harm' dyad, a shift expressed most clearly in the works of Mill. When I reflect upon my own position I feel quite stranded, so for the most part I forget about myself and turn outward to structures, processes and politics, and the fate of others who are caught up in them ... which is more interesting, anyway.

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About Me

I am a journalist, writer & broadcaster, based in the U.K. I am a regular pundit on foreign/current affairs on RT , Voice of Russia and the BBC.
I am the author of 'Stranger than Fiction', a new biography of Edgar Wallace, which is available here http://goo.gl/o2cZze
I am a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines in UK & overseas including The Guardian, The Week, Morning Star, Daily & Sunday Express, The Mail on Sunday & The Spectator.
My work has also appeared in The Fleet Street Letter, The Huffington Post, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Australian and in publications as diverse as The American Conservative, Pravda, Woman's Weekly & the Racing Post.
I am strongly opposed to the neo-conservative war agenda -and believe in the urgent necessity of a left-right anti-war coalition.
On domestic issues I support re-nationalisation of the railways and public utilities (I am co-founder of The Campaign for Public Ownership), a new top rate of tax on the very wealthy, free care for the elderly, a free National Health Service including the restoration of NHS dentistry, and protection of the Green Belt and the countryside.
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @NEILCLARK66